Monday, March 28, 2011
Told you so?
Life needs less "I've told you so" moments... I still remember quite a while back ash lamenting about this but man has it caught up with me these days (oh the irony). But I don't wanna turn this into a ranting session. Rather, the crux is how should we deal with such situations?
The problem is: you've seen this sort of situation before and just know how it's all going to turn out. But the other party hasn't. Some try to talk/force the other out of it (a simple example will be that of pulling a child's hand away from a boiling kettle). But my qualm with this is, that we all learn from mistakes. Or at least we learn from mistake a thousand times better than from fear or persuasion or reason. So who are we to take away this vital learning experience? After all, we probably learnt it the hard way back in the day.
<< on a digression, I will actually let the child touch the boiling kettle. Sure, I will warn him before that it will hurt and you'd be burnt but who's to stop curiosity from taking over. And deep down, I hope every child actually go out and touch it (or does not touch it because they've seen some other person got burnt). Why should anyone just follow a blind order not to? (I guess many will be really glad I envision myself having children. Not as far as I can see at least) Following orders out of fear is just leaving your life in other people's hands. It's unfortunate/fortunate (depends on your point of view) how fear is so effective, but that is a discussion to be left for another blog post (if I even get around to that at all) >>
Ok, so back to point (I guess digressions are my favorite part of blogging. Explains all these brackets in anything I type. That's how our minds work, though, isn't is?) So back to what one should do in the face of "told you so" moments. I really do not know. I guess if I knew I wouldn't be here dissecting things. And as with human nature I'd start with myself: what I have been doing for now. I'd subtly urge what I feel should be right. But never directly, I wonder why. Is it because I simply fear confrontation and offending others? Or is it 'cos I know, deep down, that reasoning probably doesn't work (or when it does, it doesn't feel nice)? Or am I hopeful that this will be one of those moments where things will actually work out just fine? Such is the problem of the human psyche. Even when using yourself as the "test subject" we still can't figure it out at times. What more attempts to decipher others...
And then comes the moment that was all but inevitable. Those moments are never nice but it is so much worse for the person who knew it all from the beginning. We'd do without these times of vindication thank you very much. More than just the terrible feeling from the situation there's the extra kick that you didn't and couldn't stop it. Maybe, if you were someone with the force of will you could have prevented the situation. But, back to the point from the start, if that was the case, will you have relegated the other person to a "lesser" person by denying his chance of free will. If there is a god (and you know my stand on this) he must be a really miserable one.
Man. So as with every other blog post from oh-so-long-ago to now this didn't turn out like I wanted it to. I guess as much as I didn't want to rant I've turned it into one anyway. It's just so tough to do a good analysis when there's so many other "backstories" to tell before the points I wanna make make sense. Maybe that's why I have never been very good at communicating. And communicating is probably one of the few things I still do not want to treat as a science. The power of rational analysis to almost everything and anything in life has let me become a much better person (I think). But with every bit of analysis sometimes I wonder if I'm becoming less human (in the social sense). So much for the fact that we humans are different from the other animals precisely because of our brain's capability to reason. (Read an interesting book, "How We Decide" which acknowledges this but frames an argument that we are human because we feel more).
So I guess that's it. Blogging is definitely something I want to do more often, but it's always so tough. I've got the things to talk about, but putting them to words is always so, so tough. The ethics course I've been taking here has been really interesting (I still have my qualms with it but am I glad I'm taking it here rather than in NUS despite all the workload and problems). Maybe all the writing we've been forced to do can help me write better, communicate better. And maybe I'd come here more often and be able to put what I am thinking down. Nothing sharpens an idea more than changing it from its abstract form to something else. Hopefully the next time I'd have something nicer to talk about
The problem is: you've seen this sort of situation before and just know how it's all going to turn out. But the other party hasn't. Some try to talk/force the other out of it (a simple example will be that of pulling a child's hand away from a boiling kettle). But my qualm with this is, that we all learn from mistakes. Or at least we learn from mistake a thousand times better than from fear or persuasion or reason. So who are we to take away this vital learning experience? After all, we probably learnt it the hard way back in the day.
<< on a digression, I will actually let the child touch the boiling kettle. Sure, I will warn him before that it will hurt and you'd be burnt but who's to stop curiosity from taking over. And deep down, I hope every child actually go out and touch it (or does not touch it because they've seen some other person got burnt). Why should anyone just follow a blind order not to? (I guess many will be really glad I envision myself having children. Not as far as I can see at least) Following orders out of fear is just leaving your life in other people's hands. It's unfortunate/fortunate (depends on your point of view) how fear is so effective, but that is a discussion to be left for another blog post (if I even get around to that at all) >>
Ok, so back to point (I guess digressions are my favorite part of blogging. Explains all these brackets in anything I type. That's how our minds work, though, isn't is?) So back to what one should do in the face of "told you so" moments. I really do not know. I guess if I knew I wouldn't be here dissecting things. And as with human nature I'd start with myself: what I have been doing for now. I'd subtly urge what I feel should be right. But never directly, I wonder why. Is it because I simply fear confrontation and offending others? Or is it 'cos I know, deep down, that reasoning probably doesn't work (or when it does, it doesn't feel nice)? Or am I hopeful that this will be one of those moments where things will actually work out just fine? Such is the problem of the human psyche. Even when using yourself as the "test subject" we still can't figure it out at times. What more attempts to decipher others...
And then comes the moment that was all but inevitable. Those moments are never nice but it is so much worse for the person who knew it all from the beginning. We'd do without these times of vindication thank you very much. More than just the terrible feeling from the situation there's the extra kick that you didn't and couldn't stop it. Maybe, if you were someone with the force of will you could have prevented the situation. But, back to the point from the start, if that was the case, will you have relegated the other person to a "lesser" person by denying his chance of free will. If there is a god (and you know my stand on this) he must be a really miserable one.
Man. So as with every other blog post from oh-so-long-ago to now this didn't turn out like I wanted it to. I guess as much as I didn't want to rant I've turned it into one anyway. It's just so tough to do a good analysis when there's so many other "backstories" to tell before the points I wanna make make sense. Maybe that's why I have never been very good at communicating. And communicating is probably one of the few things I still do not want to treat as a science. The power of rational analysis to almost everything and anything in life has let me become a much better person (I think). But with every bit of analysis sometimes I wonder if I'm becoming less human (in the social sense). So much for the fact that we humans are different from the other animals precisely because of our brain's capability to reason. (Read an interesting book, "How We Decide" which acknowledges this but frames an argument that we are human because we feel more).
So I guess that's it. Blogging is definitely something I want to do more often, but it's always so tough. I've got the things to talk about, but putting them to words is always so, so tough. The ethics course I've been taking here has been really interesting (I still have my qualms with it but am I glad I'm taking it here rather than in NUS despite all the workload and problems). Maybe all the writing we've been forced to do can help me write better, communicate better. And maybe I'd come here more often and be able to put what I am thinking down. Nothing sharpens an idea more than changing it from its abstract form to something else. Hopefully the next time I'd have something nicer to talk about
